


Coalescence

by dumplingsquid



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 15:48:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14405364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dumplingsquid/pseuds/dumplingsquid
Summary: The birth of a Divine.





	Coalescence

In the end—after all the planning and building, the fighting and giving in—in the end it's simple. They lie on their backs, side by side. Open squeezes Tender's hand, and drops it. They close their eyes.

\---

Coalescence opens her eyes, and she is beautiful, bright steel and fluid curves. She could not have been anything else. She is kneeling, her bowed head among the treetops, dappled sunlight glittering on patterns of lavender and gold which shift across her surface. She is beautiful, and she is—obscene.

She stands. It is monumental, plates shifting and motors humming, and then she is above the treetops, in the harsh light of twin suns. She spins her head slowly. The sea and the dense forest pin her in on three sides; the Mirage hangs above her, gauzy. To the west, mountains climb, and beyond them is desert, sweeping, empty. The landscapes are familiar, but the perspective is new, strange. She doesn't look down.

Now that she's no longer hidden among the trees she'll be noticed soon. She will be noticed, and worshipers will come to stand beside her. She will take them back to the fleet, protect them, help them rebuild. The colony they are building here will be irrelevant in the light of her power. That is what she intended; that is why she was born. It must not happen.

In the space of that thought she is in the air, flying towards the mountains. They are tall enough to give even her shelter, to make even her look small.

\---

She's been here before, twice, or once, one memory overlaid with double vision. She flew the little borrowed dinghy there, to that cliff; she stepped out and held out her hand, which she took, laughing, complaining about the cold and the early hour. She sat over there, on those rocks, surrounded by saxifrage and mosses, beside that twisted, windswept pine. She wrapped one blanket around two sets of shoulders, wrapped a tail around another body, and as the first sun began to rise she kissed, was kissed, kissed back.

It was always so easy to get wrapped up in herself, two heartbeats in sync, two minds building a whole galaxy between them. It was always so easy.

She can't, she can't stay here. She'll go further, into the desert. 

\---

When she clears the mountains she lands, begins to walk. Each of her steps kicks up a cloud of red-orange sand. It is hot, and the sunlight is punishing; any living thing is hiding now, taking shelter under the earth, or in the shade of a few strange spires of rock. She thinks of sweat, sunburn, tangled matted hair. It's a distant thought, offhand; the heat doesn't bother her. It's just a point of data. 

_ Why am I here,  _ she thinks.  _ I need to go back, back to the colony, back to the fleet—back to my people, who I'll— _

She keeps walking. The desert stretches as far as she can see.  A wind stirs the air, slow, and then picks up speed; there's nothing here to break it or slow it down.

\---

She doesn't get tired but she does get bored, eventually, sick of the unchanging barren landscape. The Mirage is vast; there must be somewhere for her, some beautiful harsh planet, some tiny untouched asteroid.

The planet where she was born falls away behind her, and the Mirage surrounds her. It feels familiar, warm in a way the desert sun wasn't. So as she flies she does what she's always done: she builds.

She starts with a temple, a recreation, one where she—might have gone, when she was young, or might not have. When it's done she gives it a door, and outside the door, a street paved with cobblestones. She doesn't want to use her memories after that, doesn't want to have to think about the places where they contradict and cover each other, so instead she gets fanciful: nebula mosaics and starry stained glass, leaning, twisting, irregular shapes, impossible staircases and floating gardens.

She builds a sprawling, senseless city, and everywhere she looks there are two figures. Their features shift and swap and intermingle, but there they are walking down the street hand-in-hand—there they are curled together on the floor of a building made of fabric, one of them running their fingers through purple hair—

And there they are—there they are—lying on their backs in a metal room. And one of them speaks, or maybe both of them do, and says, "Why are you stopping me?"

And one of them speaks, or maybe both of them do, and says, "Isn't that why you wanted me here?"

\---

Coalescence flies into the empty twilight, building, unbuilding, rebuilding.

**Author's Note:**

> yeah idk i listened to the heist four (4) days ago and i have not been able to stop thinking about that one line of tender's, you know the one, ever since
> 
> im [wyveraries](https://twitter.com/wyveraries) on twitter and [dumplingsquid](http://dumplingsquid.tumblr.com/) on tumblr if you wanna talk about how good open metal is


End file.
